October 29, 2013

Now I'm normally not one of these folks who goes to get the mail and the writes a blog posts about the
penetrating insights gleaned from a typically, mundane task BUT this is different; here are the moments that struck me.

Everybody (ok, not everybody but a lot of people) are running for someone else. I was honored to be invited to run on "Team TJ" - a group of friends and family who run to remember SPC Thomas J Barbieri of the 82nd Airborne, who was killed on August 23, 2006 in Iraq. I never knew TJ but I know one of his brothers and let me tell you, if you don't think it makes a difference to run a race like this with someone's name on your back who died in the service of this country, well then I guess we just come from radically different places. I know the couple of times I thought about feeling tired, I thought about our fighting men and women not having that luxury and I kept my civilian butt moving.

One of the speakers at the start of the race was a Special Olympian. I never knew but now I'll never forget the Oath of the Special Olympics. "Let me win. But if I cannot win, let me be brave in the attempt." I'm getting choked up just thinking about that moment. Again, it was one of those events that pierces the fog of worrying about your shoes or if your number is on right and makes you remember that if the greatest physical challenge you face is feeling sore or achy, then you need to stop and remember how lucky and blessed you truly are.

I was also reminded that the running community is incredibly supportive and encouraging. Everywhere along the route people were cheering runners on and runners were looking out for runners too and congratulating people and keeping them motivated. At the end of the day, all of us were really competing against ourselves. I wish that happened more in more places.

Lastly, I learned that if you train and prepare then you need to trust in your abilities and let go and just run. The Blerch can suck it.

September 16, 2013

Today was the end of something quiet and amazing. This was the 9th anniversary of and the end of the road for a regular call hosted by Jerry Michalski (@jerrymichalski) and co-founded by Jerry and Pip Coburn. The call was named Yi-Tan and as Jerry informed us every week, that means conversations about change in Mandarin.

Ostensibly the call focused on tech issues like the Commons, changes in UI, the Singularity, the State of the World - small topics. Subversively though, the call was a community, a space...a space in which people from all stripes and walks came together to listen, talk and debate (gently). It was quite remarkable really.

Much of the credit for the remarkable nature of the space came directly from Jerry. Rarely do you get to meet someone of such rare gifts; intelligence of breadth and depth, a quick wit, an ability to draw connections between seemingly disparate items and somehow make those connections seem obvious without making the rest of us (me really) feel slow for not seeing them earlier. Layer that with an amazingly generous personality and you get someone and something special. Thanks Jerry for making that possible.

Now let's be clear - Jerry isn't dying (no more than any of us are) - he isn't going to another planet (or at least he won't tell us) and a large part of the call today focused on what could become of the space and conversations that Yi-Tan had created and hosted. We're still working on that but it should be testament to the impact of Yi-Tan that nobody on the call today really wanted to let it go. I hope to be a part of whatever comes after this and I'm willing to help out in any small or big way I can - 9 years on and this conversation isn't stale, hasn't degenerated into partisan arguments or personal attacks - that kind of achievement needs to be remembered and in some other form, continued.

That's all except that I wanted to write about it and make sure that maybe a few more people knew about it. I was always torn about telling people about it. On the one hand, you want to bring more people in to share but on the other hand, you kind of want to guard it. So I'll close with thanks again to Jerry and Pip and leave you with these links that you should use:

July 30, 2013

I know how trite it is to go all definitional and all but it's my blog so I'll cut myself some slack. So from Merriam-Webster we have for technology:

1 a : the practical application of knowledge especially in a particular area

b : a capability given by the practical application of knowledge;

2 : a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods, or knowledge

3 : the specialized aspects of a particular field of endeavor

Therefore, what we do is technology - therefore it follows (at least to my simple mind) that when I read in a book like Vintage Tomorrows the following quote, I have to think it applies to us and to what we do.

"We learned that people really do want a different relationship with their technology. They don't see technology as a cold dead thing that is cut off and separated from people. When you grow up with a smartphone in your pocket, technology is a part of your daily life.......We learned that people want their technology to have a sense of humor, a sense of history and most importantly a sense of humanity."

This is all a long way to go to ask a simple question; if what we do is technology and this is what people want from their technology, how are we using these deeply held human desires as design principles?

July 29, 2013

I've been to a lot of conferences and so much that is good about getting that many people together are the conversations that happen. I think that applications like the brilliant Intronetworks are great ways to start those conversations beforehand and maintain them afterwards but I've never really seen anything click in that "during" phase.

So we're missing a way to powerfully surface conversations but the good news is that we're not missing a chance for it. Almost every conference with an expo floor also has a reception on that expo floor at some point during the conference. How about this....

First, let's stock that reception with craft beers or craft bourbons (ok, that part isn't critical but I thought I'd include it just in case). Second, we get rid of the drink tickets (don't worry, we'll get to them evetually). Now instead of just getting drink tickets, there is a huge whiteboard or mural-sized slab of paper and baskets and baskets of the finest post-it notes.

The way you 'earn' drink tickets is by writing down and posting ideas from conversations you've had, want to have, people you want to meet, etc. You can also earn tickets by using the yarn that's also available to make connections between the post-it notes.

You're right though - we have to have some QA here so I see people standing off to the side/mingling/browsing, watching what you post and the connections you make and voting somehow (cheers, hisses?) based on the quality of your addition. That's right, your role in the community isn't just to add content but to help the community evaluate that content - think of it as live curation.

The only other piece I'll add is that I'd like this board/process be running from after breakfast on the first day. OK, so we good?

July 28, 2013

"A subculture is a group of people whose values or behavior set them apart from the cultural mainstream. A counterculture is a subculture that seeks to change mainstream culture. Fact: steampunk is a subculture. Hypothesis: steampunk is a counterculture. Keep an eye out for change."

I think we have a truckload of subcultures but I think we need a more unified counterculture. Unified is the wrong word. I'm interested in change, change at a large scale. I think that the 'net is great at creating subcultures or allowing them to bloom but is it the same for countercultures? We also talk a lot about cultures in organizations...what about sub and countercultures inside organizations?

What are elements that can be present in counter and subcultures that can make them more or less appealing?

July 27, 2013

I just finished re-reading Ender's game and now I can't wait to see the movie. I hope Harrison Ford nails Graff and Rackham is played to the hilt by Sir Ben and I hope
that the relationship between Valentine and Peter comes through as important as it is but all that isn't really the critical part.

What I hope they get right and why I'll go see this movie even though I find Scott Card's personal beliefs appalling is that the core of the book isn't Buggers or Battlerooms or games that aren't games (cue music of Games w/out Frontiers), it's about understanding.

That's what Ender's genius was. That's the heart of the
book (and the next two btw) and in bringing THAT, that lesson across, I hope the movie makers are truly successful.

I also hope that in an Ender-like twist Scott Card has been too clever by half. He has created a compelling hero whose genius is to so completely understand an alien race that he can think as they do.

Ender's message is the antithesis to Scott Card's. The Locke to his Demosthenes if you will. If the movie brings that message out, that will be awesome and inspiring and
if it doesn't but it inspires more people to read the book, the same goes. It has already inspired more and more conversation around the topic of human rights and I'll always think that's a good thing.

So yes, I'll support with my patronage, any message or story where the hero is gifted with the ability to understand and to even love those who might be seeking to hurt him.

Hmmm, where have I read another story with a hero like that? Namaste y'all.

July 23, 2013

Colonel:Now answer my question or you’ll be standing tall before the man!Private Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir!Colonel: The what?Private Joker: The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir!Colonel: Whose side are you on, son?Private Joker: Our side, sir!Colonel: Don’t you love your country?Private Joker: Yes, sir!Colonel: Then how ‘bout getting with the program? Why don’t you jump on the team and come on in for the big win?

There is a great discussion that started over on Facebook, migrated to G+ and now I want to blog about it...kind of the Oregon Trail of content. It stars a lot of my favorite folks (Greg Lowe @Greg2dot0, Luis Suarez @elsua, Richard Rashty @richardrashty) and it was this last comment of Richard's that prompted this little post.

To avoide a 1:1 scale recap - let me just say that we had come around to point about who owns "social" efforts and who should and so on - this is where the duality thing comes in (I know you were wondering). I find myself saying a lot of things like "social is different" but it is and here are some of the ways it has a dual nature.

Social is not reliant on any one tool, but often tools (like Socialtext for instance ;-)) can lend scale and speed and additional capabilities to efforts to make more of the organization visible and transparent. So we need at least two owners - we are going to need an owner who writes the check and an owner (can be the same as the first) who makes sure that all the tech details (LDAP integration, SSO, etc) are mapped out.

THEN we're going to need someone (hopefully not the first owner) to "Own" the effort within the company to change behaviors to use th new system. Ideally senior leadership will jump in and start using it but if it's not them at first, it will need to be someone and that someone will have to be passionate about it. I don't want IT to take this wrong way but I agree with Richard that IT should not own the cultural side of social. It's too important and it has too much to do with changing behaviors to be lodged in any department, I believe, below the CEO level.

When implementing an Enterprise Social Network (ESN) one time, I was asked by senior leadership what I needed to make this effort successful. I knew what the question meant - how much money do you need to buy this? I responded the best way I could, I said "all I need is for you to change the way you work." Now who will own THAT?

July 22, 2013

Every week over on G+, I'm on a panel hosted and organized by the wonderful @LizCpher and @davidchris via Stop.Think. Social. One recurring theme is that "social" isn't something you do but something you become.

I think this is a critical point. This is what separates social systems from other enterprise-wide systems. No one ever had to ask about "becoming" a payroll system. I talk to folks all the time though who think that the all you have to do is buy and deploy a social platform and poof! you're a social business. (BTW, if you'd like to talk about Socialtext/Peoplefluent's offerings, I'd be happy to ;-)). Well its not true, to become social means to change any number of things about how you think about your business. There are whole books in here about this, 11 Rules for Creating Value in a #SocialEra is a good one. The point to this rambling post though is that I have one really good example of how far down this has to go. Follow this link to the Valve Software Employee Handbook. Find out why the desks have wheels. Find out how far your company needs to go to become social - it's not about technology.

July 08, 2013

So this morning, I had a not-so-random thought. Inspired by a comment made by Eugene Eric Kim - the thought went like this:

"Organizational learning" never took hold because we are unwilling to envision new orgs & we don't know what we mean when we say "learning"

I tweeted it, G+'d it and "updated" on LinkedIn (what do we call that anyway?)...I did it on all those channels because I think I'm part of some different communities on each and wanted to see what each had to say. That was about 4 hours ago...to date, ut's been retweeted twice, had one like on LinkedIn and over on G+, has sparked two conversations in two different communities with one now up to 22 comments.

The big lesson I'm taking away here is that I need to make more of an effort to engage with folks on G+...but hey Twitter, still a couple more hours to go ;-)

T2

Quoth she/he...

"The hallmark of revolution is that the goals of the revolutionaries cannot be contained by the institutional structure of the society they live in. As a result, either the revolutionaries are put down, or some of those institutions are transmogrified, replaced, or simply destroyed. We are plainly witnessing a restructuring of the music and newspaper businesses, but their suffering isn’t unique, it’s prophetic."
--Clay Shirky